Job 22:4 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

Navigator

Job 22:4

Comments

Literally the Hebrew is, ‘Is it because of your fear that he reproves you?’ ‘Your fear’ could mean either his [God’s] fear of you, or your fear of [or for] him (an objective or a subjective genitive). Different versions go different ways, resulting in two quite different meanings. Either way the expression is sarcastic, and expects the answer, no. If Eliphaz means his fear of you, then ha asks, ‘Do you really think that God is so much in awe of you and so worried about what you might do to him, that he finds it necessary to press charges against you and deal with you because you are a genuine threat to him? Do you really think that that the explanation for your troubles?’ That is the view of the KJV and ASV. If on the other hand Eliphaz means ‘your fear of him’, then he is saying, ‘Do you think it is because of your great reverence for him and he treats you so severely?’ Obviously, he implies, it is not because of your reverence for him, but because of your secret sin that you are suffering. The context must decide which is right. In verse 3 Eliphaz has spoken of Job making his ways perfect. It is easier to see him as continuing with a similar thought and referring to Job’s reverence, rather than introducing a totally new idea – God’s fear of Job.

Application

Satan loves to drive us to despair and tries his logic out on us which seems irrefutable at first but on closer inspection does not conform to the logic of God. There are other explanations for Job’s suffering that Eliphaz had not mentioned and which Satan did not care to raise. Let Job’s mind be imprisoned in this one alone: that God must hate him or else why should he torment him so? ‘Have you been a very obedient and faithful servant of the Lord, Job? Is that why God chooses to treat you in a way that probably no believer has ever been treated before? You know perfectly well that there is only explanation for such trials: you are being punished and justice has finally caught up with you.’ But God’s logic says, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you and I have untold ways of training and correcting my children which often are not what they appear.’ By such means God at one and the same time exposes the unbelief in an Eliphaz, troubles Satan with his own weakness and ignorance, and raises his saints to heights that they would otherwise never have attained.

Questions

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Job 22:4 Commentary and Bible Study